15

‘Jesus, who busted your nose?’ said Tasso the next day. It was swollen and had a cut across it about halfway up. It was sore and looked deformed. I told him about my ride with Harlin.

‘You alright?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I told you we’d give this town a shake.’

‘You did. You also told me we’d have fun.’

‘Aren’t you having fun?’

‘Not entirely.’

Tasso chuckled. ‘When you shake something, there’s always a chance you’ll disturb vermin.’

‘This guy is dangerous, Tasso. Coy had a gun. With a silencer.’

‘What about a hammer?’

‘I didn’t see a hammer. Did I mention he had a gun? With a silencer?’

‘You want a gun? We can get you a gun. Guns are easy to get these days.’

‘With a silencer?’

‘With a silencer, if you want.’

‘I don’t want a gun, Tasso. But you, on the other hand, need a bodyguard. Or three.’

‘I’ve got Bert.’

‘I realise Bert is more than a driver, but is he a match for these guys?’

‘Bert can handle gangsters. He was an elite commando in the British Army. SAS. You know, Who Dares Wins. He’s the best.’

‘Is that right? Well, I always knew he wasn’t a chauffeur. He sucks as a chauffeur. But he’s getting on a bit.’

‘He’s still the best.’

‘Okay, he’s the best. He dares, he wins. But he’s not by your side the whole time.’

Tasso was behind his desk. He swivelled his chair so he could check out the view to the Gulf. ‘I’ll talk to him. Maybe something can be arranged. In the meantime, maybe you’d better cool it with Harlin’s girlfriend.’

‘Melody.’

‘Whatever. Cool it with her.’

‘There’s nothing to cool.’

‘Keep it that way.’

‘I think I like her.’

He swivelled back and eyeballed me. ‘You know she’s just using you to get away from Harlin?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Probable.’

‘Okay. Probable.’

He stared for a while longer, then shrugged. ‘Well, do what you want to do.’

‘I will.’

‘And get your nose fixed.’

Shovel rang later in the day. ‘I’ve found a way in,’ he said.

We met at a coffee shop on Gouger Street, an easy walk from the office. Shovel was crouched in a dark corner behind his reflective sunglasses, wearing a khaki cap. He looked like a spoi.

‘You look dodgy,’ I said to him.

He took off his sunglasses. As always, the paleness of his eyes was disturbing. ‘Not half as dodgy as you. Your nose is a disgrace.’

‘I had a bit of a run-in with a bikie, that’s all. Tell me how you’re going to get into Black Hill.’

Shovel leaned forward so his head was close to mine. ‘First tell me I’m not getting caught in the middle of a gang war.’

‘You’re not. My role in the gang war is personal. Nothing to do with Hardcastle. How are you going to bug his office?’

He leaned back. ‘If you say so. It’s a piece of piss; the security there is lame as. If you’re the first person there in the morning you key in a code and a little metal door opens in a panel. Inside that is a key. You swipe your security card to get into the foyer, and then you use the key to unlock the office.’

‘Okay. So how do we break in?’

‘Not “we”, me. You aren’t going anywhere near the place, you fucken amateur. You and your personal gang war can stay right away.’

‘Fine, I’m happy with that. Tell me anyway.’

Shovel stared at me for a moment, or more accurately at my nose. Then he leaned forward again. ‘Well, after you left last night to get your fucken nose relocated I hung round for a while and watched. The cleaner we saw finished at eleven. He cleans all the offices. He probably has his own security card, which he uses to get through the sliding door into the foyer. Once he’s inside he turns off the alarm. He must turn off the main alarm and the individual office alarms at the same time because he just unlocks each office when he’s ready to clean it. He has keys for all the offices. He cleans the two upstairs first and then the two downstairs. He does Black Hill last. So all I gotta do is get inside while he’s upstairs, do my stuff and get out before he comes downstairs.’

‘That’s assuming he uses the same routine every time. For all you know he alternates—does upstairs first one day, downstairs first the next.’

Shovel shook his head. ‘No, people tend to stick to their routines. I bet he does it the same way every fucken day. But even if he does change it round, it doesn’t matter.’

‘So what’s your plan?’

‘The first thing I gotta do is get the Black Hill key. To do that I need the code.’

‘How do you get that?’

Shovel smirked. ‘Already got it, haven’t I? Last night after the cleaner left I set up one of them cameras you gave me so I could watch the keypad. I just mounted it on the wall of the entranceway. I parked right out front, in me van, and watched it all on me little screen. The first person to arrive this morning was a sheila with frizzy orange hair. She’s got a face like a fucken dead fish. She arrived on foot; probably she catches the tram and gets off at the Greenhill Road stop. She keys in a code and the little panel springs open. I’ve got the camera in the perfect spot and can see everything, down to the colour of her fingernails. Orange, by the way. They match her hair. And I can see which numbers she presses. Then she swipes her card and the sliding door opens and she unlocks the Black Hill office.’

‘So to get the key, all you have to do is key in the code.’

‘Correcto.’

‘And how do you get into the foyer?’

‘I get meself a security card.’ He smirked again, suspiciously.

‘How would you do that?’

He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a plastic card. ‘Already got one, haven’t I? Ask me how I got it.’

‘Jesus, Shovel, I didn’t realise giving you ten thousand dollars was going to be such hard work. How did you get the damn thing?’

‘Well, I watched Dead Fish Girl from the window of me van and I saw that she put the card in her handbag. I hung round and waited to see if she went out for lunch, and she did and she brought her bag. She didn’t even zip it up. She went to the local caff and had a sandwich and read a magazine. I engineered a little diversion and while she was looking at that I nicked the card from her bag. It wasn’t hard.’

‘Not for an artist like you.’

‘Nah.’

‘What was the diversion?’

‘You don’t want to know. Look in the paper tomorrow.’

‘Fine. So you’ll install the gear tonight?’

‘Yeah. I’ll do it while the cleaner is upstairs. As I said, that’s the best time for it.’

‘But if you have the security card, the code and the key, you could do it anytime. You could do it in the middle of the night, and then you don’t risk being sprung by the cleaner.’

Shovel gave me a smile heavy with condescension. ‘Yes, I could do that. But did you hear me when I said the cleaner turns off the alarms? I don’t know the codes for those. Even if I use a key, the alarms will go off as soon as I go in.’

‘Alright. Sorry.’

‘Plus if anyone looks at the entry logs and sees that someone went into the office at two in the fucken morning they’re going to want to know why. If I go in when the cleaner is there, no one will raise a fucken eyebrow.’

‘Fine, Shovel, you’ve got me.’

‘So I go in while the cleaner is upstairs. Alright? I should have about an hour. There’s only a couple of security cameras and they’re easy to get round. I’ve even got hold of an outfit like the cleaner’s so if the cameras catch me or anyone sees me through the window they’ll just think I’m tidying the fucken place.’

‘Excellent.’

‘As if.’

‘And what happens when Dead Fish Girl looks for her card in the morning?’

‘For no extra charge I’ll put it back in her bag before she notices. Just a matter of bumping into her when she walks to the office.’

‘You’ve got it all figured.’

‘I have. As opposed to you.’

We arranged to meet again the following day so that Shovel could tell me in painful detail how well the job went and I could pay him the rest of his fee.

Back in the office, Tasso was nowhere to be found. Fern was steaming quietly.

‘I don’t know where he goes,’ she said. ‘He just disappears.’

I thought it likely that he was in a hotel room somewhere getting steamed up with a woman he’d met in a lift or a bar, but didn’t say so.

‘That’s the problem with multimillionaires, you can’t keep track of them,’ I said.

She mumbled something. It sounded like, ‘One day he’ll wake up minus a ball.’

Tasso turned up an hour later and poked his head into my office.

‘Not busy tonight, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Good. We’re having dinner with the minister.’

‘Alright. By the way, can I have a bit more of that cash you were handing out yesterday?’

Tasso hardly changed expression. ‘Sure.’ I followed him to the safe.

Fern somehow got me a place at the head of the queue for an ear, nose and throat specialist, probably by paying a significant sum of money. He took one look at my nose and told me it was broken.

‘How did it happen?’ he said.

‘Headbutt.’

‘I see.’ He didn’t ask any more questions. He used a device to look into my eyes, and made me move my eyes from left to right and up and down.

‘Your eyes are alright,’ he said.

He used another device to look into my ears. Then he looked up my nostrils with a third device that looked and felt like a mediaeval torture instrument, and with his gloved fingers he felt my nose and the bones on my face. He probed inside my mouth to see if any teeth were loose. He thought for a while and then told me he could straighten the nose on the spot. He gave me a local anaesthetic but it still hurt when he shoved it back into place.

‘You’ll feel pain for a few days,’ he said. The thought seemed to bring him pleasure.